Rasmussen: Obama still slipping

posted at 2:52 pm on July 7, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Barack Obama’s “passion index” rating dropped to the lowest level of his presidency, according to the latest Rasmussen polling.  Thirty-six percent of respondents now strongly disapprove of his performance, compared to 33% who strongly approve, giving him a -3 rating.  The poll does not completely cover the period of time since the last unemployment report, meaning that he may still drop further:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 33% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-six percent (36%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –3. Those figures reflect the highest level of strong disapproval measured to date and the lowest level recorded for the overall Approval Index …

Overall, 52% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance so far. That, too, is a new low for the President. Forty-seen percent (47%) now disapprove.

Well, 52% isn’t bad for a President mired in an economic crisis that seems unending, but it’s a far cry from where Obama started.  It’s also going in the wrong direction.  As job losses mount, the passion index will expand in the negative, and his falling numbers may give moderate Democrats in red-leaning states second thoughts about supporting Obama’s big-spending plans on health care and energy.  Getting behind a popular president is easy, but when the voters turn on the executive, don’t expect people to remain loyal — especially when they have to face the voters in 2010.

Who are those voters?  Gallup says they’re increasingly conservative:

Despite the results of the 2008 presidential election, Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal, 39% to 18%, with 42% saying they have not changed. While independents and Democrats most often say their views haven’t changed, more members of all three major partisan groups indicate that their views have shifted to the right rather than to the left.

These findings, from a June 14-17 Gallup Poll, somewhat conform to Gallup’s annual trends on Americans’ self-defined political ideology. Thus far in 2009 (from January through May), 40% of Americans call themselves conservative, up from 37% in 2007 and 2008, and the highest level since 2004.

The high-spending, no-results Obama administration will accelerate those trends in the coming months.  Expect Obama’s efforts with Congress to get more difficult, not less, even with the addition of Al Franken to the Senate.

Update: Jim Geraghty notes a Quinnipiac poll showing Obama down to 49-44 in Ohio, a key state for re-election — and one of the big losers in cap-and-trade.

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